When it comes to enterprise search there is a huge disconnect between what people actually want and what vendors are delivering today.

In theory, senior IT executives think enterprise search could be one of the highest priorities if they could only get it to work. That only makes sense because after years of storing and processing data, IT organizations are being pressed by business executives to deliver real value from all the data being collected.

Unfortunately, a very real part of the problem is that nobody is quite sure what data they have and how much of it is redundant. So with hopeful eyes IT executives look at what Google is doing as service across the Web and wonder if somebody can help them provide similar capabilities within the enterprise.

Alas, a recent survey conduced by the folks at the Association of Information and Image Management (AIIM) shows just how pathetic things are when it comes to enterprise search. A survey of 500 companies found that 49 percent of them report that they still have a difficult time finding and consuming essential information within the enterprise. Worse yet, IDC analysts estimate that workers spend as much as 10 hours a week looking for information and come up empty about half the time.

Given all the emphasis that Google, IBM and Microsoft have put on enterprise search, you might think that things would be better than they are. But the truth is that enterprise search appliances are difficult to implement and don't do such a great job of indexing all the data in the enterprise. Clearly from a technical perspective, a lot of work needs to be done in this area. From a business perspective, it's also clear that what ever vendor makes enterprise search work first is going to have a rush of customers beating a path to its door.

Of course, that vendor may turn out to not be any of the usual suspects. For example, a starup company called Hakia has a semantic search service for business that that could be adopted for internal use some day. Whatever the ultimate outcome, it's pretty clear that not only do enterprises need search appliance that are easier to implement, they also need one's that are a whole lot smarter than the blunt instruments we use on the Internet today.